With multiple Seahawks running backs out for the year, the team brought back Marshawn Lynch and Robert Turbin. Neither have played all year; will they be good to go in Week 17?
“They look ready,” quarterback Russell Wilson told reporters on Thursday. “They look ready to go the whole game. I know Turbin has been training every single day. I’ve talked to him pretty much every week. He’s been training every single day for this moment. Sure enough, it came in Week 17. I think with Marshawn, he’s got it. He just knows how to do it. He’s been doing it for years. Like I said, it was so easy, the flow of just the handoffs and the terminology and all the talk and the communication and the communication in the backfield and all the things that we talk about is real. It just flows right off the tongue. We both understand, me and Marshawn and me and Turbin, in what to do and how to do it.”
Wilson was happy to see both players return.
“I was super excited to have Marshawn back,” Wilson said. “Beast mode. He’s been great. To have Turbin back, too, as well. Both of those guys are championship running backs. Guys who know what their doing and how to do it. It’s been great. They both know the stuff so well. They’ve put their work in and everything else. It’s going to be great to see them run the football again.”
The bigger question is whether Lynch can be the guy he once was.
“He looks great,” Wilson said. “He looks explosive. He looks fast. He looks strong. Quick as ever. He always has this infamous one-leg cut that he can do where he hops on one foot twice. He’s got some special things that he can do. He runs the ball hard obviously. Once game time comes, it’s not about the show or anything else. It’s about game time. He’ll definitely be ready to do that, for sure.”
Turbin, a fourth-round pick in the same draft that saw Wilson arrive in round three, spent three seasons with the Seahawks. He was a member of the team that won Super Bowl XLVIII and that narrowly lost Super Bowl XLIX. Lynch, of course, was a central figure on those teams -- and would/could have been the MVP of Super Bowl XLIX. He notoriously told Turkish TV that someone didn’t want him to be the “face of the nation,” resulting in a controversial decision to pass, not run, at the goal line with the game on the line.